REO Town gallery/performance space celebrates its first birthday and makes plans for the future

REO Town’s Art Alley is celebrating its one-year anniversary and looking back on its many inroads into the art community during that 12-month-long trial by fire.

Diane Wilson, Art Alley’s creative director, said that in the beginning the Art Alley team didn’t know what would happen. They’ve had to undertake a continuous search for sponsors and grants, and had to put a lot of projects on hold while they do.

Even so, that hasn’t held them back. For starters, they’ve hosted a variety of musicians and local artists that people otherwise might never have discovered.

“Our goal is to get people out of their garages and showing people the work they’re making,” Wilson said. “We’re just excited to give them another venue.”

They’ve worked with nonprofits like Village Summit and provided display space for local high school students, and all with an organization based entirely on volunteers.

Perhaps most important, though, they’ve worked to rejuvenate REO Town.

Alice Brinkman, director of the Reach Art Studio also located in REO Town, noted that while the area’s revitalization is a slow process, Art Alley has been a notable step in the right direction.

“Art Alley is the only art gallery in REO Town,” Brinkman said, “and it provides a great base for artists in the Lansing area and beyond. We (at Reach) have been able to use Art Alley for our art shows, which has been great to have as space for putting on exhibitions, and it’s been a great place for us to be able to have art openings for our kids’ projects.”

Art Alley’s biggest accomplishment in this first year, however, has been the ambitious project known as MI-ArtShare, a project designed to help the arts flourish in Michigan — and to help artists flourish as well — by allowing shows to move seamlessly between galleries for maximum exposure.

For example, a show that begins at Art Alley could then be booked in whole or in part at multiple venues over the course of a month, or even a week. This serves to create what Wilson called “cultural economic development.”

“That means artists can work in the area and be able to stay in the area,” Wilson says. "Having your artists and your creative folks today is what makes your community attractive for other people. They want something to see, something to do when they’re not working. And we also need artists to be able to make a living doing what they do — (to make) a living creating.”

The first partner gallery has already opened in Charlotte, and ArtShare itself operates across six counties. Wilson hopes to one day forge ArtShare into a statewide art network.

But at the local level, Art Alley has one simple wish for the future. One day, Wilson said, they hope to have something happening there each day of the week. That takes time and money and, given that Art Alley refuses to host any show that they can’t pay the artist for, dedication.